


Tea And Other Things

by acommontater



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Gen, Post-Avatar: The Last Airbender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25263754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acommontater/pseuds/acommontater
Summary: “Why do you keep coming here?” Some small part of her laughs when he startles, spilling his tea.“You’re my sister.” He says, carefully drying off his robes. She rolls her eyes.“I know that, dumdum. Why do you keep coming back?”He looks at little lost at that, blinking at her with his uneven eyes.“You’re my sister, Azula.” He says again, like it explains anything.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 45
Kudos: 627





	Tea And Other Things

**Author's Note:**

> My take on a Azula redemption arch I suppose? This is one of the few tracks that would seem possible for her in my mind. Not particularly compliant with the comics, but doesn't necessarily contradict them except for a few lines.

Her brother comes every week.

He makes a pot of tea, pours them both a cup, and talks to her. She doesn’t respond, merely stares out the window or observes the sky, depending on where they’re sitting. She doesn’t touch her cup of tea. There are only small defiances one can show the Fire Lord after all.

At first, he seems unsure of what to say. If there’s anything to say.

(They’d been friends once. Or at least allies in the same struggle. She isn’t sure anymore.)

They sit silently for a couple of hours, her cup of tea going cold, before he leaves again.

After several months of this, he starts telling her about the goings on out in the world. Safe, general topics, nothing that tells her anything truly useful.

Eventually he’s comfortable enough to vent about the minutiae of palace goings on. It doesn’t sting the way she’d thought it might, hearing about her rightful life. He complains about the old traditionalists and etiquette that only those born and raised in the palace truly understand. Sometimes she almost laughs.

Zuko always tells her when he’s going to be gone for a while. As if she’d worry or something.

But he always comes back. So stubborn, her brother.

/

He unchains her, afterwards.

Azula isn’t spitting flames anymore, but she’s still sobbing. Zuko doesn’t think he can remember a time he’d actually seen her cry before. He sits on the ground next to her and waits until she cries herself into exhaustion. It takes a few hours, the sun low in the sky.

The comet is gone and he has no idea if Aang has succeeded or… Well, they aren’t dead, so he assumes that Aang has stopped his father.

Katara sits nearby, her gaze moving between watching his sister cautiously and the sky anxiously.

“You need help.” He says quietly to Azula. “I’m going to make sure you’re taken care of.”

“He’s going to kill me.” She screams, looking unseeingly past him. “Don’t you understand? I failed!”

“I’ll protect you.” Zuko says.

On the grate next to him Azula goes limp.

“You left.” She sobs on the ground. “Everyone leaves, you keep leaving. Traitors all of you!”

Zuko moves to unlock the cuffs. His hands are slapped away by a strip of water.

“What are you doing?” Katara demands. She meets his gaze for a moment, then sighs. “At least wait for backup before you do anything.”

Zuko nods, instead moving to sit next to Azula, letting her lean against him. It speaks to how spent she is that she doesn’t protest, just rests her head on his shoulder, tears soaking into his torn and scorched robes.

/

It’s two years before she finally says anything to him.

“Why do you keep coming here?” Some small part of her laughs when he startles, spilling his tea.

“You’re my sister.” He says, carefully drying off his robes. She rolls her eyes.

“I know _that_ , dumdum. Why do you keep coming back?”

He looks at little lost at that, blinking at her with his uneven eyes.

“You’re my _sister,_ Azula.” He says again, like it explains anything.

She sighs. They lapse back into silence for the remainder of his visit.

“I don’t like green tea. If I wanted the taste of grass I’d chew on the lawn.” She says suddenly, as he packs up. Zuko looks up at her.

“Oh, I didn’t know. What’s your favorite?”

She thinks for a moment.

“I… don’t know.” She realizes. Her brother looks sad for a beat.

“I’ll bring some different kinds then. Next time.”

The next time he visits is several weeks later. He looks tired, dark circles under his eyes.

He brings a new type of tea each visit now. She takes at least one sip, if only to give her scathing opinion. On the weeks he has to be away, he sends along the week’s tea choice to the nurses for her.

She discovers that a strong, spicy blend from somewhere deep in the Southern Earth Kingdom is actually pleasant and invigorating. She tells him that it’s passable.

/

The crash from outside the palace when the damaged warship lands can be heard from where they sit. Katara tenses next to him as they wait.

An agonizingly long time later, a familiar if battered looking group enters the courtyard. Zuko lets out a long sigh of relief.

Sokka is grinning widely like he can’t help himself as he leans on Suki, who helps him hop one-footed across the ground. Katara runs to help support him. Behind them, Toph marches in. Behind her is his father, caged in an awkwardly bent lump of metal that she bends along with not much care. After them, Aang walks slowly, looking distinctly ragged, but otherwise mostly unharmed.

A soldier steps forward and bows deeply to Zuko.

“The Fire Sages informed us of your victory in your claim to the throne, Prince Zuko. What should we do with Ph- Fire Lo- with your father, sir?” She stumbles over the titles awkwardly.

“Take him to the prison for now. I will see to him later.” Zuko says.

“I’ll make sure he gets there.” Toph says, a dark look on her face. She follows the soldier and several more join up behind where she holds Ozai drifting along.

“What happened?” Zuko asks, watching his father disappear down the hall.

“I took away his bending.” Aang says. Zuko whips around to stare at him. Aang shrugs awkwardly.

Zuko can’t help but glance at Azula, who suddenly looks terrified all over again. Aang steps towards them and she flinches.

His sister looks so young, suddenly. Zuko forces himself to shift to kneel next to her, ignoring his body screaming at him.

"I have to go, but I'm going to find somewhere safe for you to go as soon as I can, okay?" His hand twitches like he'd thought about reaching out. "I'll come visit as soon as I can. I'm not going to leave you alone, I swear."

He has her escorted out of the palace to a temporary holding cell while he researches facilities to help her. He holds her desperate gaze for a long as possible as they carry her out.

Then he turns and goes to join his friends (how strange it still is to think of them as friends) to rebuild their world.

/

After three years, she’s allowed to start walking through katas again.

It’s nothing like the old practices, with Li and Lo shouting out critiques. The anger she’d had for so long has been snuffed out. She’s not sure that she could produce a flame now even if she wanted to. (She’s not sure anymore if she wants to.)

A Fire Sage- one that Zuko trusts, who’d apparently helped him and the Avatar and stayed loyal to old ways- comes to help her with her forms. He teaches her new ones to replace some of the ones he deems lacking. The new motions are like moving in slow motion, focusing on meditation and breathing. It’s relaxing in a way bending forms have never been before. She lets her mind drift sometimes as she runs through sets, letting it go to some calm far-away place.

/

The Avatar comes to see her once.

It’s about a year after the war, when she is still deemed untrustworthy. She is told she has a visitor and her hands and feet are bound in a way they aren’t anymore when Zuko visits. The little figure in bright robes is unexpected. He frowns at the chains, but doesn’t comment on them as he takes a seat across from her. Azula eyes him warily. She can’t figure out what he might want from her. He doesn’t say anything to explain himself, merely sitting and waiting patiently.

It’s a different kind of silence than when she doesn’t speak to Zuko. The Avatar looks her in the eye with an unnerving calm. They sit there long enough that her wrists and ankles start to ache under the heavy metal. Finally, she sighs.

“Did my brother send you here?”

“No.” He says. “I came because I wanted to offer you a choice.”

She blinks slowly at him, not dropping his gaze.

“If you want, I can take away your bending.” She recoils and he lifts a hand placating. “It’s up to you. I wouldn’t force someone unless they were a danger to the world. But if you couldn’t bend, you could live at the palace again. You wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone anymore.”

Azula takes a moment to consider his words. It’s an awful thing to think about, fire is as much a part of her as her own limbs, but… When Zuko had fallen, in the moment after the waterbender had beaten her and he’d been laying still on the ground, she’d had a moment of terror. Because Zuko couldn’t be dead, he just couldn’t. Especially not from her. She’d never been able to before and the thought of finally following through on it was as exhilarating in triumph as it was horrible.

If the Avatar took away her bending, she wouldn’t be able to hurt him like that again. But she’d be weak.

“Bending is far from the only way to cause harm, Avatar.” She says pointedly.

“That’s true.” He says. “Do you still want to cause harm?”

She looks away from his steady gaze. She can’t decide if she stays silent because she knows he won’t like the answer or because she doesn’t have one for him.

“Zuko doesn’t seem to think you do. Neither do I.”

She looks at him out of the corner of her eye. He smiles a bit sadly at her.

“I know what it feels like to be forced to be a weapon in a fight you never got to choose.” His voice is gentle. She hates it. “And for what it’s worth, I forgive you for what you did.”

“A stupid thing to do.” She tells him. “Forgiveness is childish.”

“You are a child.” He says, still infuriatingly gentle. “Just like me.”

She bites back the words on her tongue.

“Thank you for your visit, Avatar. I’m sure Zuzu will be in touch if we need to talk again.”

He nods, rising to his feet and bowing respectfully. Then he’s gone. Azula feels like she can breathe properly again. She hopes to never see him again- they have already crossed paths too many times for her liking.

/

Six years after the war, she decides it’s time for her to leave.

She leaves a note for Zuko, takes some food and a packet of the tea she likes from the kitchen, and is gone before dawn. She goes north and then east, unsure of what she’s looking for. For the first time in her life, she just lets herself drift freely without a plan.

It’s over forty years before she sets foot on Fire Nation soil again.

/

(The guards and doctors of the facility seem terrified of what the Fire Lord might do when they tell him of his sister’s escape. The note she’d left says only _thanks for the tea_. He’s surprised she left a note at all.

They show him the body that washed up on shore a week after she’d gone missing, the soft identifying tissue destroyed by the sea. The Fire Lord looks dispassionately at the body that is his sister’s height, size, and hair color and orders a state mourning for the lost princess.

In private, Zuko tells Mai and Aang that Azula is wandering the world free. He doesn’t think she will be a threat, but they should know. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever see her again.)

/

Tiny feet thunder into the small house in a small village on the coast of the Earth Kingdom.

“Master Uza, Master Uza, did you hear?”

The young pair of girls skid to a stop in front of their firebending teacher, practically falling over with excitement. Their teacher raises an eyebrow and sets her cup of tea down.

“Hear what?”

“News all the way from the royal city!” Aiki exclaims.

“We have a new princess!” Yuka nearly yells.

Their teacher blinks slowly.

“That’s wonderful news, girls. I’m sure the Fire Lord and his wife are very pleased.”

“I’d love to be a princess and live in a fancy palace.” Yuka sighs, starry-eyed. Their teacher chuckles.

“I’m sure it’s not all that great.”

The girls argue, rhapsodizing over what they imagine royal life to be. Their teacher sits quietly and lets them ramble for a while. Then she dusts off her hands and stands up.

“If you both have enough energy for all this chatter, you have enough energy for training.”

The girls groan, but follow her out into the packed dirt training area.

“Have you ever been to the royal city, Master Uza?” Aiki asks as they walk out of the house.

“A long, long time ago, before either of you were born.” Their master says bruskly. “Now let’s see some sets.”

/

Yuka flops down onto the floor with a pout. She glares at the ceiling, but it isn’t satisfying enough. She thumps her feet against the floor a few time and it’s a little better.

Her firebending teacher looks over at her from where she’s sorting out training gear.

“What’s eating you?”

Yuka sighs.

“My brother is _annoying_.”

Her teacher laughs.

“I understand.”

Yuka sits up abruptly.

“ _You_ have a brother, Master Uza?”

For all that she’s learned from her teacher, much of her life is mystery. Master Uza smiles, continuing to set training gear apart.

“Yes. An older brother. But we haven’t spoken in a very long time.”

“Why?”

“We had a fight.” Master Uza says eventually. “Before you were even born.”

Yuka can’t think of anything she’d get into a fight with her brother about that she’d never speak to him again.

“I think I’d be sad if I never talked to Zuyio again.” Yuka says, sitting up. Her teacher smiles at her again.

“I hear about my brother sometimes. I know that he got married to a beautiful girl and that they have a daughter now. He seems happy from what I hear.”

“I bet he’d be happy to hear from _you_.” Yuka says. Her teacher shakes her head.

“Come on, if you’re going to be moping around here, you can help me sort out this gear.”

Yuka jumps up and comes over to help.

/

Yuka holds herself back from tearing down the street like she used to as a young girl. She grips the letter she’d received tightly in her hands as she knocks on her old firebending master’s door. When she gets no answer, she walks around to the back. Yuka leans against the house and watches with a smile as a small class of young firebenders wraps up their training for the afternoon. Her old master dismisses the students before she notices her presence.

“Yuka! And here I thought you’d gone off to live in one of those fancy cities.” Master Uza smiles and gives her a hug.

“Not quite.” Yuka holds out the letter. “I got this, officially.”

Her old master takes the letter and scans over it. She lets out a low whistle.

“Appointed to be a Royal Firebender. Fancy.”

“I… might have talked about how great a teacher you are, a lot, and…” She pulls out a smaller envelope form her sleeve. “…maaaaybe got you an invitation to come to my swearing in ceremony.”

Master Uza is silent as she looks at the invitation. Yuka shifts nervously.

“Will you come?”

“This is in the royal city?”

“Yes. Um. Apparently the Fire Lord makes it a point to meet all the great masters that the sages hear about.”

“Of course he does.” Uza mutters. She is silent for another moment. “I need time to consider this, Yuka. But I am honored by the invitation.”

“Of course.” Yuka bows politely. “I can come back tomorrow afternoon.”

/

They are treated to a tour of the palace when they arrive. Yuka looks around in amazement as their guide tells them about the building and the artifacts they come across. Her teacher looks less than impressed.

“And here,” their guide says. “is the hall of portraits. Every member of the Royal Family has their image preserved here. Fire Lord Zuko has had many historical portraits restored and added to the hall during his reign. We start with tapestries of some of the oldest known members of the family, starting with….”

Yuka looks at the portraits in fascination. They reach near the end, where the most recent portraits are hung. Master Uza stops abruptly in front of a small image. Yuka peers around her to look at it. A young woman with a small crown perched on her head smiles enigmatically out at them.

“Oh wow.” Yuka says. “I’ve never seen any firebenders with blue flames before.”

“I should hope you never do.” Her teacher says.

“Oh, is see you’re taken with the portrait of Princess Azula.” The guide says, noticing where they’re looking. “Princess Azula was a firebender of renown and served as a temporary Regent Fire Lord near the end of the Hundred Years War, until she was defeated in an Agnai Kai by her brother Fire Lord Zuko, who them assumed the throne.”

“I didn’t know the Fire Lord had another sister.” Yuka says, surprised. Master Uza snorts and the guide looks uncomfortable for a moment.

“There is little record of her after the end of the war.” The guide says.

“I’m surprised the Fire Lord left it up.” Master Uza remarks. The guide looks surprised.

“Fire Lord Zuko has always spoken kindly, if little, about Princess Azula- when I interviewed him to learn about her for the tours, he told me about how brilliant a tactician and leader she was.”

Master Uza doesn’t offer any more commentary, but Yuka catches her looking back and lingering on the princess’ portrait. The last portrait of the current royal family is immense- the Fire Lord sits central to the rest of the members of his family. Yuka notices an odd gap over his one shoulder, like maybe they’d decided on a pose and then someone had been left out. They proceed to the end of the hall, the guide chattering happily, before they are intercepted by a messenger.

“The Fire Lord requests an audience with the new Royal Firebender and her master.”

Yuka’s eyes go wide.

“We’d be honored.”

The messenger bows slightly and gestures.

“Follow me please.”

“Oh, you mean right now.” Yuka bites back a nervous laugh.

They follow their guide and the messenger down several long halls before being shown into two overly large doors. The throne room is massive, but cheerful sunlight filters down through high windows, making the deep red colors of the room glow. Low, multicolored flames dance along the steps to the throne. Yuka stares, fascinated. She’s never seen flames like them before.

The Fire Lord sit in the center of the lower step. Yuka bows respectfully, but before she or the Fire Lord can speak, Master Uza breaks in with a drawl.

“Zuzu, hate what you’ve done with the place.”

Yuka feels her blood turn to ice. Why would her master speak so disrespectfully to the Fire Lord?

“I am so, so sorry, Fire Lord Zuko, I-“

Master Uza bats her back as she tries to step between the throne and her old teacher. Maybe to grovel on the floor to not get her kicked out of the palace. To her surprise, the Fire Lord is merely smiling a little. He leans forward a bit to peer down at her teacher.

“I did wonder if it was you after the stories I heard passed along and seeing the style of your talented student here.” His voice is rough, but much softer than she’d imagined it to be.

Then, to Yuka’s bewilderment, the Fire Lord climbs down from the dais and pulls her teacher into a hug. It looks like his shoulders are shaking.

“Still sappy as ever, I see.” Master Uza says, but she hugs the Fire Lord back.

They stand like that for a long moment. Yuka has no idea what to do. Then they pull away from each other and she sees that the Fire Lord has familiar golden eyes.

Yuka thinks about the portrait of the lost princess and stares at the back of her master’s greying bun.

The Fire Lord turns to look at Yuka. She straightens up her posture nervously.

Fire Lord Zuko bows to her, deeper than is appropriate for any royal. Yuka freezes, unsure of what to do. He straightens up.

“Thank you, Yuka, for being such a devoted student of my sister’s.”

The confirmation of what she’d suspected is still a bit of a shock. He looks meaningfully at her.

“I must ask that you keep this information to yourself. Azula-“ He glances back at her teacher. “-chose to leave the palace many years ago.”

“Of course, your highness.” Yuka says quickly. Fire Lord Zuko smiles at her. He has a much kinder countenance than she’d ever anticipated.

“I look forward getting to know you, Royal Firebender Yuki. You may be dismissed, there are some things I would like to discuss with your teacher.”

Yuka hesitates for only a moment, glancing at Master Uza who merely waves her on. Then she bows and quickly makes her way out of the throne room.

“What the fuck.” She hisses, louder than is probably appropriate for a Royal Firebender.

She ignores the slightly disapproving look from the guard on duty.

/

Zuko turns to face his sister once her student has left. She has the same sardonic expression on her face, but time has softened her. She has a new hairstyle, liberally streaked through with grey now. It’s jarring to study her familiar face suddenly gone from a child to an older woman.

“Will you stay?” She’s already shaking her head before he finishes the sentence. “Not forever, just. Just for the week. A few days.”

Azula sighs. Zuko reaches out, touches her shoulder.

“Please. I’d love for you to meet Izumi.”

“I’ll stay one extra day.” She says finally.

“Thank you.” He smiles at her. “I’ll make us tea.”


End file.
